O potencial do Amazonas na produção de potássio: caminho para a autonomia de fertilizantes e segurança nacional do Brasil

Abstract

The war between Ukraine and Russia threatened to impact Brazilian agribusiness, as Russia is one of the largest global suppliers of fertilizers, essential for agricultural productivity in Brazil. Dependence on these inputs exposed vulnerabilities in the supply chain, threatening the country's production and trade balance. This theoretical essay reflects on the exploitation of potassium deposits in the Amazon as a strategy to mitigate these externalities, ensuring autonomy in fertilizer production, strengthening agribusiness, and ensuring national security. In this sense, political economy and geoeconomics, in which relations of production and distribution of life's goods are also relations of power and strategic disputes between states and organizations, defines the problems to be addressed by economic intelligence and the more specific threats. The study completes the logic that a trade surplus is a means of building public savings for later investment in defense. The threat of shortages of this important input can be neutralized by exploiting potassium deposits in the municipality of Autazes (AM). The methodology includes an integrative review of works that corroborate the aforementioned logic. The results indicate that Amazonas has significant reserves of potassium, capable of meeting national demand and reducing dependence on imports. The exploitation of these deposits would strengthen the agribusiness supply chain, consolidating it as a pillar of the trade balance and generating resources for investments in national security.